Cavalier ignored all the warnings, including the Australian government’s official communique not to travel to Thailand, and boarded the 787-8 for Bangkok in the early afternoon the Thursday before Easter. It was a few days before Songkran, the Thai New Year Water Festival. He dozed through turbulence cushioned by the six-metre wing flexibility, so that most of the movement was confined to the wings. He read a book he had brought containing fold-out Thai maps, taking notes and scribbling down the route he planned to take, following the movement of Australian POWs building the Thai–Burma railway for their Japanese masters from 1942 to 1944. He also listened to music on his iPad, playing Dean Martin’s ‘Sway’ over and over, a song he swore he could never be bored with. He spoke briefly to the Thai woman sitting next to him. She complained about an Australian boyfriend who had invited her to Melbourne for a two-week ‘trial run’ before a possible marriage.
‘I am so happy to return to Thailand,’ she said. ‘I don’t like Australian men.’
Cavalier began to think about what he would encounter there, at the hottest time of the year, at the end of the dry season. Two hours from landing, the captain warned that the riots had escalated throughout Bangkok. ‘It may be difficult to leave the airport,’ he told them, as the plane touched down on time, at 8.40 p.m.
There was a nervous moment when Cavalier was held up at passport control. He did his best to sound relaxed when he asked the official at the counter, ‘Anything the matter?’
The official held up his hand and made a phone call. Cavalier was asked to stand aside. He began to feel concerned. Was this call to Jacinta’s SIU? Would they not allow him in? He knew of cases where drugs had been planted in luggage to ‘facilitate’ false charges. He felt certain he would be tracked, but would he be stopped even before he got in the country? Cavalier had once had to bribe a passport control officer in Vietnam to gain entry there, but this had never happened in Thailand. After a few minutes, his Thai passport, which he had obtained when he married Pin, was stamped ‘allowed to stay for an unlimited period’.
Cavalier collected his coffin from the carousel, checked its contents and moved towards the exit. He could hear the muffled sound of bombs going off in the distance and the indistinct static of automatic weapons fire. It caused more than a little consternation among travellers. They crowded at information desks asking questions. Where were the police to protect them? What about the military? Was Bangkok safe to enter, even if they were allowed to go in?
Cavalier wheeled his baggage through the green ‘Nothing to Declare’ barrier and was in Thai territory. It was his wife’s home and it brought back a flood of memories, but he didn’t have time to reflect as he merged into a throng of hundreds of people milling around. No one could leave. Buses and taxis were not willing to depart with the rioting so close and, in any case, police were ordering them not to. As if to make the point that leaving was too dangerous, a rocket soared over the airport and exploded into a building a few kilometres away. People screamed and pushed back into the airport forecourt. Cavalier moved in the opposite direction, to a deserted escalator going down to the ground, and made his way outside to the taxi rank. Despite the wet weather, the oven-like heat of Bangkok enveloped him.
Drivers and taxi officials waved their hands, telling him no one was taking fares. But he had a driver—Ladang—who always picked him up. Cavalier pushed his trolley away from the scores of drivers to a car parked a couple of hundred metres further on. A grisly-looking individual, with a face that had seen too many brawls in Thailand’s many illegal back-alley fight rings, was leaning against his vehicle, a late-model Mazda, smoking.
‘You’re not frightened to drive, are you, Ladang?’ Cavalier said to him in Thai.
‘Nice to see you, Victor,’ he said with a smile and a most respectful wai, ‘Get in quickly!’
Cavalier put his bags in the boot. Ladang stubbed out his cigarette and jumped in the driver’s seat. Other drivers, police and officials gesticulated as he sped off. The cops jumped on their bikes and gave chase. Ladang skidded past two barriers, the police in pursuit some eighty metres behind. Lightning flashed and it began to rain, soon becoming a deluge. Cavalier directed Ladang down back alleys north of the airport. They sped through the rain, twice skidding badly enough for Ladang to have to fight the steering wheel. The motorcycle cops soon gave up chasing the taxi, which was now just part of a mirage of dancing lights. Once out of the backstreets, Cavalier instructed Ladang to take a slow ride on main roads to the Sukhumvit Road area in the city’s east, close to the rioting.
By just after 11.30 p.m., they were not far from Soi 21 off Sukhumvit Road. Traffic was at a standstill and the rain was still torrential. Bombs could still be heard, along with the odd static from automatic weapons, more starkly and closer than at the airport.
‘Where do you stay?’ Ladang asked. ‘We are stuck here.’
‘The Grand Millennium, Soi 21.’
‘We can’t get through. Not even via its back entrance.’
‘What street is the back entrance on?’
‘Soi 23,’ Ladang said with a gap-toothed grin as he rubbed his pug nose. ‘Lots of massage parlours; lots of girls.’
‘Just a moment,’ Cavalier said, using a second mobile to phone the hotel. The receptionist explained that, because he had not checked in by 10 p.m., his room had been given to someone else. He had experienced minor hiccups at hotels in Asia before but never a cancellation on the day of his arrival.
He paid Ladang two thousand baht, four times the usual fare.
‘If you want me . . .’
‘I know, Ladang, I’ll call, thank you.’
Cavalier lugged his baggage for ten minutes to Sukhumvit Road, where, despite the chaos nearby, he could see foreign males—farang—negotiating with prostitutes while huddling under umbrellas. His navy-blue baseball cap kept his head dry but the rest of him was soaked, from the rain and the dripping humidity, which had his shirt clinging to his back. As he trudged through puddles, he heard a cry he had not heard since before his marriage.
‘Where you go hassa man?!’ a prostitute called.
He grinned. When he had first heard this call, meaning ‘handsome man’, on Bangkok streets two decades ago, he’d looked around for a Hassa Mann, famous Australian Rules footballer of a bygone era. As soon as he smiled, the prostitute hustled on ankle-breaking high heels along the road to him. She was short and wearing a miniskirt that revealed muscular legs.
‘I carry for you,’ she said, ‘I carry for you.’
‘No, that’s okay,’ he answered, gripping his thirty kilograms of luggage. ‘Can you tell me where Galleria 10 is?’
The woman, while peppering him with questions, especially about his acceptable Thai, led the way to Soi 10 off Sukhumvit, which was one long traffic jam. The hotel, at which he had stayed with his wife a decade earlier, was tucked away three hundred metres along Soi 10, which suddenly seemed a quiet haven. He tipped the prostitute, thanked her, and approached the receptionist in the glass-fronted modern hotel. It was designated ‘boutique’, which usually meant cheap and exotic, with an allegedly fashionable decor. The prostitute lingered at the entrance, hoping she could snare Cavalier for a ‘short-time’ stay, but he waved her a pleasant goodbye.
‘You lucky!’ the female receptionist said in English, a sizeable gold-framed colour portrait of the king on the wall behind her. ‘We just have had several cancellations. People don’t fly to Bangkok because of riots. But you need to book over the internet.’
‘But I am here!’ he said in Thai.
‘Sorry,’ the girl said, her eyes falling to paperwork.
Cavalier pulled out his iPad, asked her for a wi-fi address and booked in for the night. After ten minutes, he was given a room by the now-apologetic receptionist.
The hundred-dollar-a-night three-room suite was quiet, with avant-garde paintings, and wallpaper etchings depicting the city skyline. It was after midnight. Despite the hour (it was 4 a.m. Australian time), he was alert and didn’t feel like going to bed. He’d finished unpacking when his mobile rang. It was Jacinta.
‘You are in Bangkok?’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘You did not stay at the Millennium?’
‘How did you know I was staying there?’
‘I spoke to your editor, Driscoll, earlier today.’
‘I can’t sleep. This city does that to me. Do you want a drink?’
‘No. Tomorrow, maybe.’
‘I can’t tomorrow.’
She was silent for several seconds before she said: ‘I’ll call you. Where do you stay?’
‘Galleria 10 on Soi 10, Sukhumvit.’
Jacinta rang off.
Cavalier then spoke to the receptionist about the hotel’s safety regulations, fire escape and exits. ‘I always check these things,’ he said, ‘ever since I was caught in a hotel fire in India. Made me sort of compulsive.’ The receptionist went into the office behind her desk and came out accompanied by a staff member she introduced as Manni. ‘Could you show Mr Cavalier around the hotel?’ she asked.
Cavalier insisted on going down six flights on the outside fire escape and, with Manni guiding him, walked through a kitchen area. He noted a very narrow passage from the hotel’s ground exit to a locked gate and a back lane. They then made their way back up the fire escape to a door on the sixth floor, which Manni had wedged open for their return. When Manni told him the gym and pool on the eighth-level roof area were closed, Cavalier offered him a thousand baht for a key to the pool. After returning to his room, for swimming trunks and a hotel dressing-gown, he took the lift to the roof.
The rain had stopped, and Cavalier took in the view of the skyscraper-dominated skyline of Bangkok, which was just like any other of the city canyons that had risen like mushrooms all over the affluent Asian centres in the last three decades. At ground level, though, were the still-unswallowed elements of the old Bangkok—shacks and tin-roofed dwellings. He could see down into the Soi, which was flooded here and there. A sudden surge of people flowed and splashed into it and then out again. Some of them were running from the riot flashpoint near the Asok Skytrain station, a few hundred metres away. The noise of the mob, and the military and police following them, filtered up through the muggy, steamy night air and then evaporated.
The pool was in darkness but for reflections from surrounding buildings rippling over the water’s surface. Cavalier dived in and swam thirty lengths, enjoying the relaxing rhythm of a strong swim, which he always found cleared the head. He stopped for a breather, his arms resting on the pool’s wall. He noticed a figure, half-hidden behind a pillar at the other end. He had not heard them come into the pool area. He remained motionless, staring. Without moving his head, his eyes searched for something, anything, with which to defend himself. A pot plant was five metres away but too big to be helpful. The figure then emerged from the shadows.
It was Jacinta. She was wearing a dark cap, and a light trench coat with its collar well up. Her stilettos had Roman-style black straps that wound high up her slender calves. A folded umbrella rested, like a sword, at her side. Cavalier climbed out of the pool and reached for his towel.
‘You are much fitter than I thought,’ she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘I try,’ he said, drying himself, ‘and I’m not drinking as much.’
She took a few steps his way. ‘I thought I should offer hospitality,’ Jacinta said, still without warmth, ‘especially after the way you looked after me.’
Cavalier pulled on his bathrobe. ‘You sounded distracted on the phone,’ he said.
‘It is a very busy time for policing in this city,’ she replied, her expression rueful.
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘There is a special bar not far from here.’
‘What about the riots?’
‘They’ll abate soon. Even protesters must rest. They will disappear from now until after the heat tomorrow.’
Jacinta followed Cavalier to his suite. ‘You want me to wait in the lobby?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s a lounge. Make yourself at home while I shower and change. Fix yourself a drink. There’s chocolate, and other rubbish, in the fridge.’
Jacinta got herself a soft drink and sat back on a sofa. Her eyes fell on the long, dark green bag. She stood up and noticed the books on his desk that were sitting next to binoculars, his Nikon camera and several leather wristbands. Jacinta examined the books’ titles. One was on the French language. Another was on Thai. She flicked through the French book and noticed he had underlined phrases in pencil. She glanced at the other two books. One was a geographical study on Thailand itself with more detailed maps than she had ever seen in a guidebook.
As Cavalier emerged in jeans and sneakers, he saw that Jacinta had picked up one of his books on the Iraq War.
‘You interested in that war?’ she said, reading the back cover. ‘That was more than a decade ago.’
‘I like military history,’ he said, pulling on a shirt that revealed lean, strong, yet unpumped, arms.
‘Learning French?’ she asked, pointing to a language text he had brought.
‘Brushing up,’ he replied as he put a watch on his left wrist and a brown leather strap on his right wrist.
‘Going to France soon?’
‘No. I have French friends in Bangkok. Just wanted to be reasonably articulate when I see them.’
‘And the bag?’ she said, pointing.
‘My coffin? All my cricket gear’s in that.’
‘Have never seen cricket “gear”,’ she said.
Cavalier grinned, and pretended to ignore her indirect request to nose about in the coffin as he reached for his favourite white short-brimmed fedora.
‘Shall we go?’ he said.